Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="gideonpepys" data-source="post: 7306801" data-attributes="member: 79141">Session 36, Part Two - ChatwoodKasvarina felt the pull of the Arc to the North-East, which they guessed must mean Slate.  They travelled there from the ‘bread-basket’ of Risur and arrived in a day-and-a-half.  (It was best not to use RHC teleport circles as Leon was still wanted.)Kasvarina was drawn to a private residence.  It had been the home of a young eladrin woman named Chatwood, who now languished in an insane asylum, but the house was still maintained by one of her friends, Bosede.  She recognised Kasvarina and allowed the memory event to unfold in her living room:In the recent past, Kasvarina and Chatwood share tea and Chatwood – who is only just an adult by eladrin standards – seems nervous around her elder.  Kasvarina explains a mission for Chatwood: to ingratiate herself into Duchess Ethelyn’s circle of advisors and offer her skyseer visions as aid in the ongoing Fourth Yerasol War. The visions can all be accurate and Chatwood should try to honestly help the war effort, with the exception of anything having to do with a place called Axis Island. When possible, Chatwood is to fake visions saying that the island is dangerous, and to let the Danorans take it and lose soldiers without a fight. Chatwood asks why but Kasvarina won’t explain. So Chatwood refuses, saying that Risur is her home now, far more than Elfaivar was. Kasvarina seems to realize that her spy can no longer be trusted to be silent, but since there are so few eladrin women even now, she cannot kill her. The memory-event ends with Kasvarina casting power word blind and leaving, with Chatwood calling desperately after her.Everyone was horrified, especially Kasvarina.  She could not remember, in response to Korrigan’s questions, if her actions had been orders from above or self-motivated.  Though she sought to remain in control, Leon saw tears limning her eyes.  Bosede told them that Chatwood’s blindness had been diagnosed as ‘hysterical’.  She had begun to talk to anyone who would listen about a conspiracy and that had only reinforced her diagnosis.  She took them to the Royal Slate Asylum for the Lamentably Unstable, where they were met and stonewalled by Doctor Mayhew Fisher.  No amount of pressure or intimidation from Korrigan would convince him to allow them to see Chatwood without official documentation. Suddenly Uriel blurted out, “Obscurati?!?” having picked up this thought from Gupta (who had just recognised Fisher’s Ob ring, but planned to be more surreptitious). The doctor leapt to his feet but Korrigan punched him with his stone fist.  The rest of the staff were more amenable after that, and they found, cured and released Chatwood, who despite her intense gratitude was unable to tell them more than they already knew.  (Kasvarina avoided meeting Chatwood face to face; Leon found her outside and tried to comfort her.)They took Fisher to jail, as they knew questioning him was useless thanks to the Ob geas.Having already smoothed his path with sendings, Korrigan paid another visit to Duchess Ethelyn of Shale, under solitary ‘home arrest’, to bring her word about Sokana.  Ethelyn was very grateful and confirmed that she had indeed been somehow drawn into their shared vision (in which she encouraged Sokana to help them).  Ethelyn confirmed her opinion that Korrigan and his unit were now Risur’s best hope to thwart the dangers she had tried to oppose.  Korrigan told her about Chatwood and Ethelyn was very sorry to hear what had happened to the poor girl.  Korrigan wanted to know if anyone else had taken Chatwood’s role and offered Ethelyn tainted advice.  Ethelyn dismissed this.  She was well used to hearing criticisms of her handling of Yerasol IV and said that she had never wavered in her attempts to take Axis Island.  (Korrigan remembered thinking differently at the time…)  She also said that her actions against Aodhan (who was working to industrialise Risur and Flint and planned to marry Lya Jierre) could not have been influenced by the Obscurati, as Aodhan was clearly working in their best interests – however unwittingly. Korrigan asked Ethelyn if she still had any influence over the fey and she shrugged. “I don’t know. You’re the only person I’ve spoken to in over a year.  You and Sokana, obviously...”Gupta went to talk to Lauryn Cyneburg.  Cyneburg was excited by the findings of a team of arcanists who had been investigating the temporal waves Gupta had hypothesised.  They had confirmed the existence of such waves, but had yet to establish their cause.  (“If their cause lies in the future, that’s hardly surprising,” said Cyneburg.) But that was not all: while experimenting on these waves one of the arcanists detected sound waves, which he recorded using cutting-edge technology. He replayed the sounds using a crystal-powered gramophone. It was a female voice singing lullabies in elven!  At one point Gupta thought she heard a segment from the song of Vekesh. No one had any idea where (or when) these sounds were coming from, but they were working on it. Later, when Gupta re-joined the group, Matunaaga said, “I wonder if this has anything to do with the colossus…?”</blockquote>

Verification